Ba’s Bedroom

Artist’s Statement: 

My grandmother’s bedroom in England has long been a source of comfort. From a young age, I remember watching and listening to cargo trains pass by in the distance beyond her bedroom window. As I grew older, they were replaced by overground passenger trains, but the room itself has remained frozen in time. When we visit, I sleep beside my grandmother, talking to her late into the night until one of us falls asleep. Her bedroom is filled with personal objects, family photographs, and rich, colourful fabrics from India, all of which contribute to the visual density and emotional warmth translated through the work’s intricate detail. 

“Ba’s Bedroom” is a linocut based on a photograph I took during my last visit to her house. I chose this medium to preserve the room’s layered textures and intimacy. The stark contrast of black ink mirrors the tension between permanence and loss, allowing memory to feel both fixed and fragile.

My work explores migration, home, and intergenerational cultural identity through my family’s movement from India to England and, finally, Canada. The inclusion of familiar garments and objects I grew up seeing serves as a material guide to my family’s journey and the broader histories of Indian migrants seeking better lives abroad. In this way, the piece becomes a living record of displacement and belonging, examining selfhood, distortion, and perception through the lens of cultural memory. With each generation, fragments of knowledge and tradition are inevitably lost, creating gaps that shape and distort my sense of self. As a third-generation immigrant who cannot speak my mother tongue, I return to these intimate spaces to confront that disconnect and reclaim a sense of cultural connection that feels both inherited and unfinished.